Ice Cube explained how he’s helping first responders amid the novel coronavirus pandemic when he visited Late Night on Wednesday.
The rapper turned actor launched a fundraiser to help those working to stop the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Ice Cube poses and wears a mask on the front of a black T-shirt that reads “Check Yo Self Before You Wreck Yo Self.” The expression is a lyric from his 1992 song “Check Yo Self.”
“I want to do something cool for the first responders,” he said of the initiative. “We’ve got real heroes out there putting their lives on the line who are not getting a lot of recognition.”
He added that first responders are “silent heroes all through the country.”
“Everybody has a foundation that you can donate to. This, that and the other. But you don’t really get nothing back, you know? You just donate. It’s kind of like your secret in a way and that’s it,” he said. “So I was like, ‘What if you got something? What if you got something cool like a cool T-shirt that pushes the cause as well?’
“You give money, you get a cool T-shirt. You push the cause,” Ice Cube continued, adding that he doesn’t profit from the sale of the shirts. “Everything goes to the first responders.”
He said that buying the shirt is a win-win situation. “They get money and you get a chance to push a cool T-shirt with your boy Ice Cube on it,” he said.
Ice Cube also gave an update about a possible fourth movie in the Friday franchise. The original film just celebrated its 25th anniversary April 26. Friday was followed by 2000’s Next Friday and 2002’s Friday After Next.
While he admitted that he was “ready to go” with making a fourth Friday movie, the passing of star John Witherspoon put the plan on hold. Witherspoon died in October 2019 at the age of 77.
“It threw us all back. We’re still grieving over the loss of such a talented, special man,” he said of Witherspoon’s passing. “He wasn’t just funny. Everybody saw his funny side. But he was also a serious, thoughtful guy.”
Ice Cube added, “We feel like we all lost our pops, our grandpops, our uncle and we’re hurting.”
The actor noted that he hopes to still make the movie one day. “Hopefully we’ll figure it out, but for now, it’s really on the back burner,” he said.
Watch Ice Cube’s appearance below.
This article originally appeared in THR.com.